How I Started a business, expanded it, almost lost it and got back on my toes

Category: Marketing

This year is coming to a close and it’s time to start planning what you want from your business in 2019. But where to start? For the next 4 episodes, we’ll discuss how we plan for our next year of business including, how to create a marketing calendar, budget, mine our existing list, and set goals. No matter what happened in 2018, the best thing you can do for your business is create a plan that drives sales and improves systems for the next year.

Today, we’ll talk about planning a whole year’s worth of amazing events and how we create our marketing calendar.

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There’s something happening in the retail world and it’s becoming more noticeable … “the drop.” This sales tactic, relies on releasing a limited-edition product, collection, or service without much advance warning. The idea is to create hype around the drop thus, facilitating a sense of urgency to buy due to the perceived scarcity of the offer. Whew. That’s a lot of fancy business words.

In short, this Drop Culture, has been around for a long, long time. And we’re seeing more and more of this type of strategy and marketing because … it works. In fact, pairing the Drop Culture with today’s advertising on Social Media, makes for one super-effective way to reach current and prospective customers and clients.

But can “the drop” work for every business? Is it sustainable? Listen to the podcast to hear our thoughts and how we’ve used “the drop” to drive revenue.

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We all know that Social Media platforms are a great way to get your business’ message out into the world. I mean, if you really think about it, it’s a f-ing amazing way to get your message out because you’re in complete control of the conversation. Your message won’t get misstated, deleted, or watered down.

If you’re like us, there’s never enough time in the day to post—not to mention the rabbit hole of clicking and liking that can eat away at your valuable time. Sometimes you have the perfect picture, but writer’s block takes over the instant you have time to post. Ugh, the struggle is real.

But … it doesn’t have to be. Today we’re going super-practical and talking about some tools we’ve been using to batch our posts thus saving HOURS on Instagram and Facebook.

We talk about creating systems in your business ALL THE TIME, and Social is no different. Having a system to post saves tons of time and eliminates what can often feel like the Social Time Suck. Want more information on the apps that we’re using to make our posting easier and effective …

MeetEdgar: We use MeetEdgar to post to the studios’ Facebook pages and you can also post to Twitter and LinkedIn. We love MeetEdgar because it allows us to create a library of content that is categorized based on type of post … and let’s us post when our audience is most active on our Social platforms.

PLANN: If you thought there was no way to schedule your posts for Instagram, you’re wrong! Thank goodness! PLANN allows you to create posts in advance and schedule reminders to post on BOTH your Feed and Stories. You can make sure your Feed pictures have a pleasing arrangement. And my favorite thing about this app is if you’re posting to Stories, the pictures don’t have to be taken within 24 hours. Oh yeah, and you have access to great information on your Insta analytics, including what posts are most engaging, tracking color palette, and even what hashtags have created the best engagement.

VSCO: If you’re not using this app to filter your photos, you might want to start. You can save filters to apply to all your pictures to create a pleasing aesthetic for all your Social posts.

Canva: We use Canva to create professional-looking graphics for our posts. You can even use Canva to create fliers and it’s all super-easy.

Lightroom:If your studio or business has poor lighting or the lighting changes dramatically throughout the day, this app can really help you filter your Social posts.

These are the apps that we’re using every day to systematize our Social posting thus saving us HOURS on Instagram and Facebook. Hopefully you can use this information to save time and frustration as well!

Follow me on Instagram and see what I’m working on in my business each day @shesonhertoes

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If there is one thing that has totally transformed my business over the last year, it’s the way we changed our approach to advertising.

Instead of simply running ads and hoping people will see them and come into the studio, we’ve created a lead generation campaign, which helps us grow our list AND bring us predictable leads every single day!

Check out Tuesday’s post to learn why it’s important to build your list and generate leads.

How does it work? I recently interviewed David Phillips, my online marketer. He does all the paid social and online marketing for my 2 Pure Barre studios. Watch the video and learn more about how you’re literally leaving money on the table by not using paid social to generate leads and grow your list.

We also talk about specific things that both worked … and flopped … for my studios over the course of 13 months of advertising. I’d hate for you to make some of the same mistakes I made–although each mistake lead to our current advertising strategy, and it is definitely working!

David created a special page for anyone interested in contacting him to learn more about how to generate leads. Simply clickhere.

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We all know that advertising is essential to running a successful fitness business. To keep growing your studio revenues, it’s nothing more than a numbers game—you’ve got to keep getting in more new clients each month and then convert as many as possible to grow.

But isn’t paid social where it’s at? Why should I worry about building an email list?

1. Email Subscribers Are More Likely to be Buyers

Why? In our scrolling society, we aren’t too picky about who we follow and what we look at on Facebook and Instagram. Um … exes, random people you haven’t seen in years, random people you only met once, weird looking dogs and cats, the list goes on. But … we flip out if someone emails us too much or we get on some spammy list. Am I right? Bottom line, if someone signs up for your emails, they want to receive and read them. They have given you the green light into their inbox and eventually into their wallets.

2. People Check Their Email Every Day

As Facebook and Instagram make regular tweaks to their algorithms, your posts may not reach all your followers. But … everyone checks their email. Like every day. Even if they don’t admit it. If you’ve got something really important to tell your clients (or future clients) you can bet most of them will at least glance at your email in their inbox before deleting.

3. Social Is a Rented Platform

Since none of us is fortunate enough to own Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Google, we just have to settle on using them to build followers. But even if the mere thought of finance and accounting gives you hives, you know that owning an asset is far better than renting. When you build a list of email subscribers, you build an audience. This audience is an asset. As you offer and develop new products and services, you can sell them to your list over and over again.

So how do you build a list? You can actually use paid social to build your list … and your business.

On Thursday, be sure to check out an interview with my online marketer, David Philips, Founder and CEO of ONEMarketing. That’s right! It’s a video! David and I will be discussing how to use paid social to generate leads for your business and build your list. You won’t want to miss this!

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Ok. Since I moved into my new house, I’ve become a bit of a procrastinator, which is totally unlike me. I’m always scheduling myself so I have plenty of time to work on a project. I would work on it a little bit at a time and then revise and work some more. This was a great process. I never felt stressed or pressured and I always got the work done in plenty of time. Well lately, my new process is the exact opposite …

I know I have to do something. I keep putting it off. That little voice inside my head tells me I need to stop procrastinating and just get started. And then I put it off some more, which leads to an all-consuming feeling of self-loathing and frustration because by this point, I should be finished … which then leads to me finally sitting down and starting. What gives?!

There seem to be a lot of articles written about how procrastination is a good thing. Apparently, it means you are contemplative and waiting to get all the information before making a decision. I call bullsh*t. Putting off work sucks. It’s unproductive and could really have a negative impact on your business. And repeatedly putting off work creates a bad habit of laziness, which is definitely bad for your business. Ahhh! I don’t want to be a procrastinator! Make it stop!

Part of my problem is that I have a lot of big projects I’m working on right now. They are all pretty complicated and involve a lot of time. So, it’s hard to prioritize. I’m also not really sure how to complete all of them—as in I don’t have a plan. And thus, the procrastination.

One of the things I’m working on is updating www.shesonhertoes.comand increasing the audience to the website. So … if you know someone who would like the content of the blog or the book, feel free to share with them!

Maybe you didn’t know this, but I single-handedly created this website. Sure, I got a template, but I did the formatting, got the pictures, selected all the things you can see and click on. And it worked out pretty well for a while, but apparently, it could be a little easier to navigate. I hired a web-marketing firm to help me make some website updates. Maybe you’ve seen the pop-up to get 5 Steps for Effective Interviews—you should check that out! It’s great information about the 5 things that every employer should do during an interview to hire the best employees … and it’s free. Just click to download.

Ok, but back to the website … working on the website updates has been great. I was getting all the things the web-marketers wanted finished. They wanted copy for email templates, I created copy for email templates. They wanted ideas for graphics, I gave them ideas for graphics. Until the web-marketing experts recommended that I create some courses to sell on creating a hiring process and how to host an interview to hire great employees. WTF?! I wasn’t really prepared to do that between now and the end of the year. It sounded complicated, not to mention a ton of work. Plus, I don’t know how to create a course. I thought I could put them off and maybe they’d let it go. But no, these people were relentless.

But, it turns out I do know how to create a course. So now, I’m writing and creating a course called How to Hire a Rock Star Team. And all the procrastination just about killed me. I’ve been putting this off for about 3 weeks and giving every excuse known to man. After realizing I wasn’t going to get out of creating this course and doing the work, I finally sat down … and started. And … it really wasn’t that hard, once I started. Damn.

Instead of creating excuses, all I had to do was sit down and develop a plan. I outlined the parts of the course. I wrote each section and created the supporting materials. That’s right! Supporting materials—this course is legit. And now, this week I’m recording audio, because just reading some stuff would be much less effective than if an actual voice was narrating to you. Err, telling you what to do.

There you have it … lots of exciting things happening with www.shesonthertoes.com. Check out 5 Steps for Effective Interviews and be on the lookout for the course, How to Hire a Rock Star Team.

And speaking of procrastination … I finally got my home office together. Well, almost. I have a few finishing touches, but I’ll share some pics with you next week. Don’t worry, it will be finished!

Until then, stay on your toes!

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One of the questions I’ve been asking myself over the last three months has been, “How much should I spend on marketing and advertising on a per client basis?” Essentially, I’m trying to figure out how much is too much so I’m not wasting money and eroding my net income. Determining this value could also be useful when planning my monthly clothing expense budget.

Well … when you calculate the Lifetime Value of your average client or customer, you might realize that you can spend more than you thought to attract new clients or “assets” to your business.

This week I took the time to determine the Lifetime Value of my average client as well as my highest spending clients. Here’s what I discovered:

First, I wanted to look at the value of an average client in 2016. To calculate this, I took my annual sales divided by the number of active members and came up with $1,675. Our clients on Pure Barre Platinum (12-month contract) pay $139 x 12 months = $1,668, so I find it valuable to know that an average client would spend about $140 each month on classes and clothing.

Next, I ran a “Big Spenders” report in MindBody, which is the client management software we use at my studios, to determine the value of my top clients in 2016. My top 100 clients, or the top spending 100 clients, had an average annual value of $2,545. My top 10 clients, or the 10 clients who spent the most at my studios, had an average annual value of $4,097! This means my very best clients were spending about $341 each month or 144% more than my average client!

But these are just annual average values and my typical client stays on for about 3 years. This number was a little tricky to determine, but I did the best I could looking at my top 20 clients and how long they’d been taking class. Then I did a simple average to come up with the 3 years.

Based on this information, the Lifetime Value of my average client is $5,025 and the Lifetime Value of my top clients is $12,291. Or is it? Each client usually refers at least one friend, so the Lifetime Value of each client at my studios is between $10,050 and $24,582!

What does this mean? Well, if we don’t get a client to purchase a package beyond our $99 Intro Month, we’ve lost not the value of the next package, but potentially $25,000 or more depending on how many friends that client refers. Yikes!

It also means that I now have a baseline from which to determine my marketing and advertising expenditures to attract new clients. If the average client has a Lifetime Value of $10,050, then I can probably spend a little more money than what I have been to acquire new clients. Specifically, I want to host more events at the studios to promote our Pure Barre community and now I know that spending that extra money makes sense, especially if I can attract more people like my top clients.

I’ve received several inquiries over the last few weeks about what makeup and skincare products I use. I’ll share my skincare routine with you in my next post.

I’ve also made significant progress writing my book on how to run a successful fitness studio—it’s almost done and I’ve started having discussions about publishing. This means I’ll be able to increase my posts pretty soon. Good times!

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It’s time to get real—if something is important to you, you’ll make time for it. If it’s not important to you, you won’t. Simple.

Being in the fitness industry, I hear a lot of excuses. So many that I’m kind of numb to hearing them. I’ve heard them all. Occasionally someone invents one that is so outrageous that I have to applaud them for it—true or not, still an excuse. If you really wanted to do it, there wouldn’t be an excuse.

I bring this up because last week I didn’t post because I just wasn’t into writing. It wasn’t important enough to make time to do it. I hate that it happened and I’m sorry, but I had a chance to recharge and work with my Team more this week, so now I actually have some great things to write about. Good times!

Ok, so a few weeks ago I had a chance to attend an incredible presentation about business given by Paul Dunn, Chairman of B1G1, a non-profit organization with a mission to create a world that’s full of giving. B1G1 helps small and medium-sized businesses achieve a more social impact by embedding giving activities into their everyday business operations.

The main takeaway from Paul’s speech was that the true challenge of business in today’s world of the Internet, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and countless other social media outlets is to matter. As a business, you must choose to matter to your clients and move from being dispensable to being indispensable.

Paul told us that in 1 second, there are 7,519 Tweets typed, 2,472 Snaps sent, 58,875 Google searches made, 68,234 YouTube videos watched, and 2,566,295 emails sent. Incredible! But, as a business, how are you supposed to compete with that?! How can you stay relevant or important to your clients with all those other activities? Or ahem, distractions? How do you make your business matter in the midst of all these other things happening each second?!

According to Paul, the answer is to get smaller. What? Smaller? How is getting smaller going to make your business matter more? It’s all about getting bigger and growing. Having more, means your business is getting more successful.

Paul would argue that instead of marketing to the masses, you need to drill down and be irresistible to a specific group of people. In order to get smaller and matter to your clients, you also have to figure out the “why” of your business. Why is your business opening its doors every day? Why do you do what you do?

This weekend, I had the chance to get together with several members of my team to talk about a lot of these things. The purpose of our meeting was to figure out how Pure Barre Winston-Salem and Pure Barre Clemmons can matter more to our clients and specifically, how we can update our membership perks to add more value to our clients and increase the quality of their experience with us.

This is why I love being a business owner. This type of meeting and interaction with my Team is what gets me going. Solving problems like how to be better at what we do and getting my Team’s thoughts on how to solve these problems—there’s nothing better than that in the business world. We spent 2 hours collaborating and came up with some great ideas!

In addition to attending Paul’s speech, I’ve also read 2 great books that I think you should check out:

To start our meeting, we first took some time to create a list of the qualities and likes of our typical Pure Barre Platinum client. Pure Barre Platinum is our 12-month contract that offers the best pricing and most membership benefits. Approximately half of our active clients take class as Platinum members. It had been at least a year since we last updated our Platinum benefits, so it was definitely a priority to see what else we can do for our most loyal and engaged clients.

I’m glad that my Team was excited about talking through who our typical Platinum client is, because they came up with some great ideas, that I had not thought of. Of course, our typical client lives within proximity to the studios and is health conscious with disposable income to spend on exercise and fitness. But my Team also identified that they want to be ahead of trends, they are also goal-oriented and in some cases extremely competitive. Once we had a good list of the things are clients represent and value, we could take a better look at how to add more value to our Platinum membership.

We realized that we could do a better job engaging our clients and incorporating nutrition and healthy eating into our offerings at Pure Barre. Specifically, we discussed doing the following:

Allowing clients to bring unlimited free friends to the studio to take class. Right now, we just allow 1 free friend each month, although if someone wants to bring more, we are always accommodating. This is something we’ll definitely adopt.

Working on partnerships or events around healthy food.

Creating a private Facebook group for Platinum clients that would give them access to all the things that are important to us as teachers, healthy eating, staying on trend, enjoying time with friends or getting support from the group.

Alerting Platinum clients when new retail comes in before it arrives.

Inviting clients to take over our Instagram accounts for a day and show us what they are up to.

Create videos to help clients stay on trend. We were especially excited about creating one called “How to take your best barre selfie.” Who wouldn’t want to learn that?! Haha!

Offering birthday discounts so clients can treat themselves on retail when they are celebrating themselves.

More marketing of our Bride-to-Be and Baby-Bounce-Back packages on Facebook to bring in new clients.

Ok, so some of these ideas don’t necessarily just offer value to our Platinum memberships, but that’s kind of the beauty of getting the Team together, you start to have great ideas about other parts of the business or you realize that doing something else that’s pretty simple would improve the business. Since a lot of my clients might be reading this, I’m not sure if or when we’ll adopt any or all of these ideas. If you feel strongly about one or all of them, please let me know so we have that input!

By completing this exercise, we also stumbled upon our “why.” Sure, we offer Pure Barre classes and provide a killer workout, but that doesn’t really encompass why we do what we do. Our “why” is this:

“We challenge people so they can learn their true strength. Being strong is about being fit and eating well. When you prioritize being fit and eating well, you live well and your possibilities are limitless. Taking care of your mind and body allows you to take care of everything that is important to you. We make that happen for you.”

Pretty powerful. Figuring out our “why” makes taking care of our clients easier because we know how to get smaller and matter. We can now become irresistible to a specific group of people and that is how we’ll continue to be successful by increasing our clients on our Pure Barre Platinum membership.

Next week, I want to tell you about another presentation I got a chance to listen to given by the Founder of ActionCOACH, Brad Sugars. It was a big pump-up presentation with jumping and shouting. One of the chants was “I am a money magnet” and we all had to stand up and shout it. But, what can you do with the money to matter? I’ll delve into that in my next post.

Until then, stay on your toes!

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When I opened my first studio about 4 ½ years ago, I chose a location that was amazingly perfect for the two groups of clients I was trying to attract. Clients literally did the marketing for us by referring friends and we were constantly seeing new faces in classes throughout the day. And the business grew. It was amazing. But this was not typical and certainly did not include any type of business plan to generate predictable, solid leads.

Fast forward to when I opened my second studio and right before it opened, I got really sick—like couldn’t leave the house because I had shingles on my face. It was not amazing.

Because I was struggling to simply take care of my basic needs (thankfully I had some amazing friends who brought me meals every day), I didn’t have a lot of time or energy to execute a lead-generation campaign and … the studio did amazing. No, actually the opposite. We really struggled building our client base. I’ve since redeemed myself and will share how I created a way to bring in steady, predictable leads to both of my studios.

Are you skeptical? If you are, that’s cool. I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say that if you are skeptical, you haven’t been tracking your existing marketing campaigns. Am I correct? It’s ok. But, you need to start tracking–like today.

First Things First, Start Tracking Your Marketing Campaigns

Before we jump into things, it’s important to discuss the concept of tracking your marketing campaigns. First, ask yourself: Where do I get my clients from? Newspaper or magazine ads, Facebook, Instagram, ads on Facebook and Instagram, referrals, walk-ins? Make a list and try to give a percentage to each source.

Second, ask yourself: Am I currently paying money to advertise and I haven’t received any clients from that campaign? If the answer is yes, then stop spending that money. Cancel the ad or whatever it is. It’s not working. If you’re not sure if you are gaining leads from a campaign, start tracking and see what you find out.

I used to have an advertisement in a local monthly magazine. At first, it was great and probably brought in close to 30 new clients over the course of two months (not too shabby), but after a while, it didn’t work and nobody mentioned that’s where they had heard about us. So, I don’t run that ad anymore.

Find Out What Does Work to Reach New Clients

Now that you have eliminated any marketing campaigns that aren’t working for you, you’ve freed up some money to redirect towards the things that do actually work to drive new leads to your business. Now ask yourself: What’s working to bring new clients to my business? Should I do more of that? Or should I investigate something new?

I have discovered that there are really only 2 marketing initiatives that work to bring new clients to my studios: client referrals and Facebook ads. Client referrals are great because you’re pretty much acquiring a lead for free and that lead almost always (like 90-95% of the time) buys our introductory offer, which is the $99 New Client Special. That’s like tastes great and less filling! It’s a no brainer—keep those client referrals coming all day long.

So how do you encourage client referrals? Below are all the ways that my studios encourage clients to bring their friends and family in to take class.

Referral Fees: Offer a small amount of money for existing clients who bring in friends. We offer $10 in store credit to any client who brings in a friend who purchases the $99 New Client Special. If you could acquire a new client for $10, or 10% of what they just spent, would you? That’s a pretty reasonable Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC).

Free Class to Client Friends: Offer a free class to the client’s friends. I am a firm believer in not offering first class free—it doesn’t provide any incentive for people to buy packages and continue taking class and it devalues the service to zero. If any of my clients are reading this, sorry, free just doesn’t work—it’s something that has been proven time and again at both studios. Anytime we offer free classes or some kind of Open House with free class, those people taking advantage of the event pretty much never make a purchase—they are unqualified leads that just want something for free. But … a friend of an existing client with a membership? That is a qualified lead. This friend has heard how great class is, how great the studio is, how clean it is, how friendly everyone is, how great the workout is and most importantly has seen how great their friend looks now that she’s been taking class. Offering them a free class simply provides no excuse for them not to come to the studio and then purchase the introductory offer because they already understand the value of the service provided. The CAC here is essentially $0. You’ve already scheduled the class and the other existing clients taking that class are covering the cost of the teacher, electricity, music etc. It doesn’t cost you anything to offer this free class to a client’s friend.

Sell Gift Cards:Offer gift cards to encourage gifting your service. This is pretty simple. Clients can buy their friends a gift card and introduce them to the studio. Again, CAC is $0 or the nominal fee for each plastic or paper gift card/certificate.

Sell Friend-Centered Promotions:Offer a promotion to encourage clients to purchase for their friends or the friends to purchase for themselves. Again, pretty simple. At key times during the year—think Holiday, or Summer, when it’s a little slower—we offer a special promotion (3 classes for $33) designed to bring client friends into the studio to try class. If you spent any money advertising this promotion your CAC would be the ad spend divided by number of people purchasing—or if you just emailed your list CAC would be $0. So again, CAC is likely pretty low.

Awesome, right? Sure. This is all great. At most, you’re spending 10% of the purchase to acquire a new client and these leads are qualified, meaning they have a high likelihood of purchasing.

The only problem is—we’re leaving out thousands if not tens of thousands of potential new clients by only focusing on client friends and referrals. What if the person has never heard of my business? How do I reach them?

Fast Lane Leads vs. Slow Lane Leads

I hope you’re getting excited reading this because what lies below pretty much blew my mind when I first implemented it. And it’s totally changed the way I look at marketing and spending my advertising budget.

Before I share the special sauce, we need to review 2 concepts.

I have no idea who said this, but I’ve read it in a few books and articles written by Mike Dillard and Russell Brunson—when they cited it they didn’t know where it came from either. But here goes … Nobody wants to buy a drill. They want to make a hole. So, you shouldn’t advertise drills. You should advertise how to make a hole. You need to sell the end product or RESULT. Any light bulbs going on? Any hamsters spinning on that wheel? If you’re in the fitness industry, this is such a critical concept, it’s not even funny.

We also need to define the “fast lane” client and the “slow lane” client. Fast Lane leads are the ones we talked about above—friend referrals. They’ve heard of your business and are ready to buy. They already understand the value and will purchase immediately because they understand the result your product or service will give them. Remember, they saw their friend get stronger or look better and more fit from taking class, so they’re ready to buy right away.

Slow Lane leads are not ready to buy. In fact, they probably don’t even know your business exists. If they do know you exist, they don’t understand the value of your product or service. Maybe they don’t care about working out, or they think walking is a better workout, or they get childcare at the Y—doesn’t matter, they’re not sold on you. But … that doesn’t mean they won’t buy in the future. How could you introduce your business to those Slow Lane Leads? How could you get them to buy from you?

Using Facebook Ads to Reach Slow Lane Leads

You can use Facebook ads to reach Fast Lane Leads, but Facebook ads are the ideal way to reach Slow Lane Leads—at least that’s what I’ve learned. So how do you do it? How do you create a Facebook ad to reach Slow Lane leads? Here’s a step-by-step guide:

Free Offer:You need a free offer that will have value to Slow Lane leads. This is not a necessarily a free class—these people are unqualified (as of now) and a free class won’t always work to teach them about your business. You need something that will “wow” them and make them think, “Huh, if this business is willing to give this away to me for free, what will I get when I make an actual purchase? That must be f*cking amazing!” Trust me, you have something to give away already, or you can easily make something and will “wow” these leads. Obtaining the free offer is dependent on this Slow Lane lead giving you their email address. How else are you going to reach out to them after they click on your ad? This is how you are going to grow your email list and convert these Slow Lane leads to purchase.

Facebook Ad:Next, you need to write your ad. The more simple the ad, the better. Make it clear. Choose one action and make that action clear—you want these Slow Lane leads to click on your ad and download your free offer. Tell them to do this in clear, concise language.

Targeted Audience: Now, you must find your targeted audience. If you have a killer offer and a clear ad, but don’t advertise to the right group, you won’t have any clicks and you won’t get any leads. Where to start? How about your existing client base? Do they have any over-arching common interests? Did you know that Facebook can create duplicate audiences? You can take your existing client base and Facebook can find people similar to that list—pretty cool. Or maybe you just target those who have liked your Facebook page and their friends (I mean, we already know friends are more apt to buy).

Split Test the Ad:You’ve figured out your offer, created your ad, found the audience and you’re ready to go. Split testing the ad is an important step because, well, you just don’t really know this audience, right? After all, they haven’t bought from you and don’t know much about your business. You don’t know what makes them tick. You’ll want to run a few different ads with different pictures or different copy. Maybe try testing the ad with different audiences and see which gets the best results. These tests should just be small buys—I did about $10 a day for 1 week. After you try a few things, you’ll start to see some patterns or success with one ad or one audience. Then you can adjust or go full throttle and increase your ad spend. I actually spent about 3 weeks split testing and learned some valuable information along the way. I tried 2 different offers, several different audiences and about 8 different ads.

What were my results after completing these 4 steps? After only running about 2 ½ weeks, my ad has over a 40% conversion. That means 40% of all the people clicking on it have submitted their email address and downloaded my free offer. That’s pretty f*cking awesome and means my offer is resonating with my audience. So far, from those leads we’ve had approximately 24% purchase our $99 New Client Special, which is also a great conversion. You have to remember, however, that these leads are Slow Lane leads, so many aren’t going to purchase right away. You will likely have to reach out to them or email them multiple times to reach a sale. You’ll need to create compelling and informative email content to educate these leads on why your business, product or service is something they should buy. It’s harder to earn these Slow Lane lead sales because you have to sell them on the RESULT of your product or service and most importantly, earn their trust. Slow Lane leads are not quick to make decisions or give something a try unless they trust the result.

So, there you go. You now know the secret to successfully generate steady leads to your business. Below are a few resources you can check out to create your Facebook Lead Generation Campaign. I used all of them to create mine. If you’d like more information, give me a shout with a message or comment. Follow the blog by submitting your email and I’ll send you more detailed information on how I created my ads.

Next week, I’ll talk about to-do lists and multi-tasking.

Until then, stay on your toes!

AdEspresso: This tool makes ad creation easy. You can also make several versions of your ads for your split testing.

Click Funnels: The video on the first page of this site is totally stupid. Don’t let that fool you. Once you understand what a sales funnel is, you’ll wonder how you ever functioned without one.

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There seems to be many schools of thought on the concept of goal-setting. In The Compound Effect, we’re taught to focus on making small changes for a big impact. I’ve also read a few articles suggesting setting goals beyond your reach is the way to go, because you’ll always be working towards something.

This post is not about the right or wrong way to set goals. It’s simply advocating sitting down, deciding on some goals and putting a plan in place to achieve them. I know that setting small, achievable goals works for me because now it’s propelled me to make some larger more complex goals, however, you need to evaluate what works best for you. Remember, hope is not a plan. You have to plan to get results and effect change in your business.

In my last post, I discussed how I set quarterly goals—three to be precise—and also establish a reward for myself if I complete all three. So here are my goals for the first quarter of 2017:

Improve my retail marketing and develop an inventory strategy

In addition to having Pure Barre classes at my studios we also sell workout clothing and accessories. I’ve always focused my marketing efforts on attracting clients to the studio for the sole purpose of taking class. Well, not anymore. I’m going to start marketing Pure Barre Winston-Salem and Pure Barre Clemmons as retail clothing stores. So even if you don’t take class, you’ll want to come shop and check out our amazing apparel.

It’s imperative to test and measure to make sure your plans are effective. I’m going to track my inventory turns and margins more thoroughly. At this time, I don’t keep any core items (like that one amazing pair of black leggings) in stock. I’ve always focused on having new things arriving all the time. I’ll have to evaluate if it makes sense to have core items or if my existing buying strategy is working.

I started this blog because I’m really passionate about my businesses. But I also want to write a book. Blog – > book. This one will probably take me more than 90 days, but I’m sure I can figure out how to get some more followers at the very minimum. Wanna share this post with all your friends and help me get started?! #shamelessplug

Create a passive income strategy

A passive what?! Passive income—you know, income that just shows up at your door repeatedly with little effort on your part to keep it going. Is that even possible? It sure is. And if you haven’t looked into it, maybe that should be one of your goals too.

As of right now, all of my income comes from Pure Barre. It’s important to diversify by adding additional income streams, like real estate (rent), investing in high dividend stocks or direct marketing.

Ok, so I’ve got my goals. Time to just get crazy and get them all done! Not so fast…I’m not going to start working on these goals until January and it will take me the full 3 months to get them accomplished. In order to set myself up for success, I’ll have to sit down (this weekend) and come up with 5-10 strategies to get each goal complete as well as how I’m going to test and measure my progress and success. That’s right, I’ll want to quantify each goal. With like numbers. Yep, actual numbers.

And now for the best part. After I complete all of these goals, I’ll give myself a reward for the achievement. It’s important to make the goal something that will motivate you and also make it specific—so you might want to think bigger than just going out to dinner. By March, I’ll have accumulated a whole bunch of American Express points and I’m going to use them to purchase a bracelet.

Have you set your goals for 2017 yet? Start small and focus on 1-3 things that you can get done in the first 90 days of the year. Write your goals down along with your 5-10 strategies for completing them and then test and measure to see how you’re doing. If you make goal-setting a habit, where do you think you’ll end up by this time next year?! Something tells me you better crank up the ‘ole laptop or grab a pen and paper and get started.

In my posts next week, I want to discuss the important topics of taking risks as well as giving back and letting others benefit from your success—tis the season of giving after all!

I also want to tell you about how I stay organized with my planner, the Day Designer, as well as an update on milk frothing (seems that y’all were very interested in learning how to make great coffee at home). My team gave me a fabulous present—a fancy milk frother—and I’ve been perfecting my use of it for the past few weeks, so I’ll share the wealth on that one. You’re welcome!